Bias in the Flesh

There is strong evidence linking skin complexion to negative stereotypes and adverse realworld outcomes. We extend these findings to political ad campaigns, in which skin complexion can be easily manipulated in ways that are difficult to detect. We devise a method to measure how dark a candidate appears in an image, and use it to examine how complexion varies with ad content during the 2008 campaign (study 1). We find that darker images were more frequent in negative ads—especially in those linking Obama to crime—which aired more frequently as election day approached. We then conduct an experiment to document how these darker images can activate stereotypes, which shows that a subtle darkness manipulation is sufficient to activate the most negative stereotypes about Blacks—even when the candidate is a famous counter-stereotypical exemplar—Barack Obama (study 2). We collect further evidence of an evaluative penalty for darker skin based on an observational study measuring affective responses to depictions of Obama with varying skin complexion, presented via the Affect Misattribution Procedure in the 2008 American National Election Study (study 3). Our work demonstrates that darker images are used in a way that compliments ad content, and shows that doing so can negatively affect how individuals evaluate candidates and think about politics. NOTE: this version contains strikethrough corrections to Study 2 based on a reanalysis of the original data.